Creepy Crawly Spider Legs Counting

Halloween is just around the corner (well, I suppose around the corner and down the street a bit). But we are already getting into the Halloween Spirit at our house! Jamie, form Hands on as we Grow has been on a Spider kick lately, which inspired me to do a spider activity too. We have done oodles of monster activities, but no spiders yet. So I decided it was time for some creepy crawly Spider Legs counting.

This counting game is ideal for preschoolers because it combines counting, numbers, and one-to-one correspondence. Perfect for wee ones just learning about the meaning behind numbers.

The Materials for this Creepy Crawly Counting Craft (say that 5 times fast!) are:

egg carton

paint

paintbrush

googly eyes (optional – just added cuteness)

hot glue or white glue

pipe cleaners

First, I cut apart 10 of the egg carton ‘cups’. I poked holes into each cup for the Spider Legs. On the first cup I poked 1 hole (with the tip of a pen), on the second cup I poked 2 holes, and so on until poking 10 holes in the tenth cup.

Then we painted the egg carton cups. Sammy did 8 and told me I could do the last 2 (it was a lot of painting!). We decided to paint them purple so they looked ‘real’ (I had suggested black, but Sammy showed me a Halloween Book with a purple spider – can’t argue with that!)

After they dried, I hot glued googly eyes and painted numbers on the back of each spider. On the spider with one leg hole I wrote the number 1, all the way up to the spider with 10 holes getting a number 10. I used nail polish because of the convenient wand, but any paint would work – or even white out.

Next I cut pipe cleaners into 4 pieces each and the Creepy Crawly Spider Legs Counting fun began! I gave Sammy all of the spiders and all of the legs at once, but you could easily adjust this to use only a few spiders at a time. Sammy carefully poked each leg into each of the holes – checking the number on the back of the spider and counting each pipe cleaner leg to be sure he had them all.

This was a great fine motor activity as the pipe cleaner was nice and sturdy and quite easy to poke through the hole in the cardboard egg carton.

I think these little spiders turned out super cute! We may end up hanging them as Halloween Decorations too. A counting activity, craft, and Halloween decoration all rolled into one! Well, all rolled into 10!

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